Palm Beach County re-entry program gives ex-cons stronger start

Editorial

March 1, 2010

Every year, thousands of ex-cons are released from state prisons and return home to South Florida, many to low-income neighborhoods and the same drug-plagued streets or dysfunctional homes that got them into trouble. To help them with their new life, the state Department of Corrections gives them $100 cash and a one-way bus ticket home. Their job skills lacking and their record now scarred with a felony, finding honest work is often next to impossible.

Is it any wonder that a third of Florida's convicts end up back behind bars within three years of their release, costing taxpayers more than $20,000 to feed and house each inmate each year?

The cost to society, both financially and in the inevitable exposure to more crime, is too high to continue maintaining the status quo. That's why all Floridians should be applauding a new program recently launched in Palm Beach County that combines local and state resources in a concentrated effort to help ex-cons find jobs, housing and other services that improve their chances of staying out of jail and on a healthy, constructive path.

The effort, if perhaps by chance, is two-pronged. On the county side, a $58,000 grant by the Criminal Justice Commission is paying the salary of a re-entry coordinator, employed by the Public Defender's Office, to identify weaknesses in and coordinate existing re-entry services, to seek more funding and to design a uniform plan for how ex-cons will transition back into the Palm Beach County community.

As it happens, the state Department of Corrections is also working to transform the Sago Palm work camp in Pahokee into a specialized re-entry prison — only the second in the state — for ex-cons returning home to Palm Beach County. Inmates would be transferred from other state prisons to Sago Palm within three years of their release, getting social service, housing, financial, medical and other services designed to smooth their transition home.

The county's ultimate hope? To cut recidivism in half, keep ex-cons out of legal trouble for at least three years and see a 25 percent growth in the number of offenders using re-entry services.

Those are lofty and worthy goals, and other communities around the state need to be watching Palm Beach County's progress closely. If all goes well, the program — and the local investment that made it happen — could serve as a model for how to help stop prison's revolving door.